Category: Beginning English

Great Ways to Start a Sentence

When you start writing, the first words you choose can shape everything that follows. Yet, we often overlook the power of these very first words. In writing, it is important to acknowledge that great sentence starters hook the reader and build the momentum you need to keep them engaged.

Sentence starters might seem like a small detail, but they truly form important part of compelling writing. They help you find your rhythm, guide your reader, and create seamless transitions between ideas. In short, they’re the keys to keeping your writing fluid and focused. 

Below you will find a useful list of common sentence starters that you can use in an English discussion as well as in essay writing. Learn these sentence starters to improve your English speaking and writing skills.

 

 

Source:  eslforums.com

Cover photo:  owlcation.com

The Debate Rages: Fewer or Less?

Use the adjective fewer to describe countable items; otherwise, use the adjective less. And here’s a tip: in general, if the noun is plural, use fewer; if it’s singular, use less: Fewer treadmills line the floor of the gym.

makeameme.org

Got it? Try this one!

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All About Nouns

Come on. You knew grammar lessons were inevitable, right? Singular or plural, you know them, you love them. Nouns, there everywhere that persons, places and things exist. See, you just learned a part of speech.

 

Take a deep breath…here we go!

In English grammar, a noun is a part of speech (or word class) that names or identifies a person, place, thing, quality, idea, or activity. Most nouns have both a singular and plural form, can be preceded by an article and/or one or more adjectives, and can serve as the head of a noun phrase.

A noun or noun phrase can function as a subject, direct object, indirect object, complement, appositive, or object of a preposition. In addition, nouns sometimes modify other nouns to form compound nouns. To understand how to recognize and use nouns, it’s helpful to learn about the different types of nouns in English.

Common Noun

A common noun names any person, place, thing, activity, or idea. It’s a noun that is not the name of any particular person, place, thing, or idea. A common noun is one or all of the members of a class, which can be preceded by a definite article, such as the or this, or an indefinite article, such as a or an. Examples of common nouns are sprinkled throughout these two sentences:

 
“Plants rely on the wind, birds, bees, and butterflies — and other pollinating insects — to transfer pollen from flower to flower. Some of our ‘other’ pollinating insects are flies, wasps, and beetles.”
– Nancy Bauer, “The California Wildlife Habitat Garden”
 

Note how all of the italicized words are common nouns, which make up the vast majority of nouns in English.

Proper Noun

A proper noun names specific or unique individuals, events, or places, and may include real or fictional characters and settings. Unlike common nouns, most proper nouns, like Fred, New York, Mars, and Coca-Cola, begin with a capital letter. They may also be referred to as proper names for their function of naming specific things. An example would be this famous movie line:

 
“Houston, we have a problem.”
– “Apollo 13”
 

In the sentence, the word Houston is a proper noun because it names a specific place, while the word problem is a common noun, which expresses a thing or idea.

Proper nouns are not typically preceded by articles or other determiners, but there are numerous exceptions such as the Bronx or the Fourth of July. Most proper nouns are singular, but again, there are exceptions as in the United States and the Joneses.

Concrete and Abstract Nouns

A concrete noun names a material or tangible object or phenomenon — something recognizable through the senses, such as chicken or egg.

An abstract noun, by contrast, is a noun or noun phrase that names an idea, event, quality or concept — courage, freedom, progress, love, patience, excellence, and friendship. An abstract noun names something that can’t be physically touched. According to “A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language”, abstract nouns are “typically nonobservable and nonmeasurable.”

In comparing these two types of nouns, Tom McArthur notes in “The Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language”:

“… an abstract noun refers to an action, concept, event, quality, or state (love, conversation), whereas a concrete noun refers to a touchable, observable person or thing (child, tree).”

Collective Noun

A collective noun (such as team, committee, jury, squad, orchestra, crowd, audience, and family) refers to a group of individuals. It is also known as a group noun. In American English, collective nouns usually take singular verb forms and can be replaced by both singular and plural pronouns, depending on their meaning.

Count and Mass Nouns

A count noun refers to an object or idea that can form a plural or occur in a noun phrase with an indefinite article or with numerals. Most common nouns in English are countable — they have both singular and plural forms. Many nouns have both countable and noncountable uses, such as the countable dozen eggs and the noncountable egg on his face.

 

A mass noun — advice, bread, knowledge, luck, and work — names things that, when used in English, cannot usually be counted. A mass noun (also known as a noncount noun) is generally used only in the singular. Many abstract nouns are uncountable, but not all uncountable nouns are abstract.

Other Types of Nouns

There are two other types of nouns. Some style guides might separate them into their own categories, but they are really special types of nouns that fall within the categories described previously.

Denominal nouns: A denominal noun is formed from another noun, usually by adding a suffix, such as villager (from village), New Yorker (from New York), booklet (from book), limeade (from lime), guitarist (from guitar), spoonful (from spoon), and librarian (from library). 

Denominal nouns are context-sensitive; they depend on the context for their meaning. For example, while a librarian usually works in a library, a seminarian usually studies in a seminary.

Verbal nouns: A verbal noun (sometimes called a gerund) is derived from a verb (usually by adding the suffix -ing) and exhibits the ordinary properties of a noun. For example:

  • His firing of William was a mistake.
  • My mother didn’t like the idea of my writing a book about her.

In the first sentence, the word firing derives from the word fire but functions as a verbal noun. In the second sentence, the word writing derives from the verb write, but it functions here as a verbal noun.

Source:  thoughtco.com

Photo by imgflip.com

Related:  NOUNS – TUTORING YOU

 

Why is Learning English So Hard?

 

 

It’s not rocket science, right? Is it because rocket science has so many rules and formulas? So does English. What’s the problem? Because English has so many “exceptions” to its rules that make learning it a nightmare.

 

It’s often said that English is one of the hardest languages to learn. Given the fact that many of the words we use in English stem from Latin and Ancient Greek words – in common with many other European languages – what is it about English that has attracted this reputation for being so fearsomely difficult? And is it really even that difficult when so many other countries adopt it as their second language and speak it a lot more fluently than we speak other languages? We’ll leave you to make your own mind up…

It just makes no sense!

One of the reasons why English is known for being difficult is because it’s full of contradictions. There are innumerable examples of conundrums such as:

There is no ham in hamburger.
Neither is there any apple nor pine in pineapple.
If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
“Overlook” and “oversee” have opposite meanings, while “look” and “see” mean the same thing.

As native speakers, we rarely stop to think how illogical many of the things we say really are – we’re just used to them. Unless you’ve been brought up speaking English, how can you possibly begin to learn all these oddities? It’s little wonder that people trying to learn English end up feeling confused. But it gets worse.

Exceptions to rules

One of the hardest things about English is that although there are rules, there are lots of exceptions to those rules.  So just when you think you’ve got the rule, something comes along to shatter what you thought you knew by contradicting it. A good example is the rule for remembering whether a word is spelled “ie” or “ei”: “I before E except after C”. Thus “believe” and “receipt”. But this is English – it’s not as simple as that. What about “science”? Or “weird”? Or “seize”?

There are loads of irregular verbs, too, such as “fought”, which is the past tense of “fight”, while the past tense of “light” is “lit”. So, learning English isn’t just a question of learning the rules.   It’s also about learning the many exceptions to the rules. The numerous exceptions make it difficult to apply existing knowledge and use the same principle with a new word.  Hence, it’s harder to make quick progress.

The order of the words

Native English-speakers intuitively know what order to put words in, but this is hard to teach to those learning the language. It’s hard to explain the difference between the right and wrong order because it’s so subtle.  We simply say that it “just sounds right”. For example, we often use more than one adjective to describe a noun, but which order should they go in? We would say “an interesting little book” not “a little interesting book”. Both are technically grammatically correct, but the first “just sounds right”. It’s a bit of a nightmare for those who are trying to learn, and it may prove one nuance too much. 

Pronunciation

As if the spelling wasn’t hard enough, English pronunciation is another cause of much confusion.   Some words are very low on vowels, such as the word “strengths”.  It’s hard to say when you’re not accustomed to English pronunciation. What’s more, words that end in the same combination of letters aren’t necessarily pronounced in the same way. Take “trough” pronounced “troff” and “rough” pronounced “ruff”.  Also, “bough” pronounced “bow” (to rhyme with cow) and “through” pronounced “throo”. It’s almost crazy!

Then, there are silent letters at the start of words. Why are there so many words that begin with a silent “K”, such as “knife”? Or even a silent “G”, such as “gnome”? If it’s not pronounced, what’s the point of including that letter in the first place?   Consequently, it only adds to the confusion of both native speakers and learners.  And the number of hapless tourists who don’t know where to begin with pronouncing a town name such as “Worcester”. Sadly, many English learners have to learn the hard way when it comes to our confusing pronunciation. Albeit, if you pronounce something incorrectly, most natives will demonstrate the correct way to you.  But not without a little chuckle at your expense.

Emphasis

To make matters even more complex, the way in which you emphasize certain words in a sentence can subtly change its meaning. For example, consider the different ways of emphasizing the sentence below:
– I sent him a letter – a plain statement.
–I sent him a letter – used to imply that you sent him the letter. Someone else didn’t send it (or “you didn’t send it, I did”).
– I sent him a letter – this could imply “I sent him a letter, but I’m not sure he received it”.
– I sent him a letter – used to imply that you sent him the letter.  You didn’t send it to someone else (perhaps even “you weren’t meant to read it”).
– I sent him a letter– you sent him a letter, not anything else.


When you’re not used to speaking English, these may all sound the same to you. It’s only by constantly being exposed to English that you start to pick up on these subtleties.

Homophones

Confused yet? If not, you will be after this next point. English is absolutely full of homophones, words that sound the same but have different meanings or spellings.

Here are a few examples…

A bandage is wound around a wound (“wound”, pronounced “wowned” is the past tense of “wind”, as well as an injury when pronounced “woond”). 

The door was too close to the table to close (the first “close” is pronounced with a soft “S” and means “near”. While the second is pronounced with a hard “S” and means “shut”).

 I decided to desert my dessert in the desert (the first “desert” means “abandon” and has the emphasis placed on the second syllable. “Dessert” is pronounced the same but means a pudding.  The second “desert” means the dry, sandy environment with camels, and is pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable).

Homophones exist in the English language that has no fewer than seven different meanings. Namely words that sound like ‘course’ and ‘raise’. Most have only two or three meanings – such as “there”, “their” and “they’re”.  However, that’s still adds an extra level of complexity for those trying to master the English language.

Synonyms aren’t necessarily interchangeable

Flick through a thesaurus and you’ll see countless groups of words that supposedly mean the same thing. You’d think that this would mean that they were interchangeable.  But you’d be wrong because even words whose definitions are seemingly in the same ballpark differ subtly.   They may apply to something completely different, because of multiple meanings.

You can’t always swap words with the same meaning either.  Further, this means that it’s easy to end up using a word in completely the wrong way. For example, you “watch” television, and you can either “watch a film” or “see a film”.  But you don’t “see television”. You’re not a “watcher” when you’re doing this, you’re a “viewer”.  However, you don’t “view television” or “view a movie”.

Idioms

English is a very old language, and over the course of many centuries, interesting sayings have been incorporated into everyday language that make little sense if you haven’t grown up with them. “Barking up the wrong tree”, “the straw that broke the camel’s back” and “raining cats and dogs” are all examples of idioms that add colour to the English language. If you find yourself starting to use idioms when you speak English, well done: you’ve mastered it!

 

But of course it’s hard. If it were easy, would you want to learn it? Never mind. Please just keep on learning by stopping at my website because, “I love to learn and share what I’ve learned.” It’s all in your hands now!

Source:  oxford-royale.com©

Graphic:  Elearnin©

 

Presidents Day Quiz

Take the Presidents Day quiz today and maybe learn something new!

The Myth

Everyone knows the story about how George Washington once received an ax as a gift, then used it to chop down his father’s cherry tree.

When Washington’s father came across the damaged sapling, the young lad supposedly confessed saying, “I cannot tell a lie … I did cut it with my hatchet.”

It’s a legend that lives on in history, but one that’s never actually been verified. Still, it remains one of the most common tales associated with America’s first president.

The trivia

In honor of Washington and all the U.S. presidents, we’ve gathered a collection of presidential trivia facts to give your executive knowledge a run for its money.

Browse this comprehensive list of trivia questions and answers to discover just how much you really know about Washington, along with other leaders who’ve served in the highest office in the land, as well as fun facts about the White House, famous first ladies, and plenty of other interesting facts.

 

The Quiz

 

Answer Sheet:

 

Source: elcivics.com

Graphic by: quiztriviagames.com

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